How many of you have boomer parents that ruined their retirement planning and now you're paying for their rent/nursing homes? I spend $1800/mo on my 70yo mothers rent. Disgusts me. I'm also paying $3100/mo for my own rent. I don't think I'll ever be able to buy another house after selling mine in 2019. Even votes against her own interests.
I'm putting my own retirement in jeopardy because of her failure to be responsible. I'm not even 40. My uncle pays his mothers nursing home, but he's 65 and she's well into her 80s. Another thing that shouldn't have to be paid for by someone else.
Yeah I'm not sure. I only heard that term recently and it shocked me that it was a thing. I immediately ran to see if it was a thing in CO.
There's some lawsuit going on in PA where a guy who works a pretty normal income job, I think maybe he was a restaurant owner or manager. Anyway, IIRC his entire family except mother lives in Italy or somewhere overseas. He's the only one in the USA. He's being sued by her nursing home for $93k in back rent. IIRC he's lost every appeal. He had not a single thing to do with her nursing home contracts. He definitely made under 100k, I think 40-60k. I don't see it in this article and I'm too tired to dig around.
I gotta be honest, that's pretty oppressive. Mom might have a right to not be homeless but IMHO has no right to enroll herself in a home in Italy and saddle her child with debt. Mom should have been repatriated back to the states if possible, and if not, the nursing home should have taken it out of her estate. Otherwise what's to stop someone from enrolling in a luxurious assisted living and sacking an estranged child with debt. Seems wrong to me.
It applies to children in Pennsylvania, so if the parent is in a nursing home anywhere in the US, but that company has operations in Pennsylvania, you can be held responsible.
As if anyone needed yet another reason to get out of Pennsylvania (I lived there for the first ~30 years of my life).
Yeah my in-laws were somewhat well off at one point but one of them lost their job two decades ago and emptied their 401k with penalties so they could maintain their standard of living.
Last year we bought them a house so the working spouse didn't need to stay employed into their mid 70s. They pay "rent" equivalent to about 25% of the payments we make each month for the mortgage + taxes. I also found out last year that since they pay below-market rates I need to count the rent they do pay as income for taxes but don't benefit from any of the usual landlord tax deductions (e.g. depreciation).
"Disgusts me" is a harsh statement to be said about one's mother (depending on other circumstances, which were not presented here). But to engage productively in the conversation:
My own meager experience, as an immigrant to Canada, is that these things can be highly culturally dependant. Where & When I'm from, I feel parents sacrificed more for their kids upbringing (kids were not supposed to "get a job" in high school or university, typically stayed with their parents until marriage, were supported financially frequently beyond that point as well). Having output a lot more energy to upbringing, cultural norm at that time was largely that children will then take care of parents on the other end; frequently parents will live out their years with one of the children (while helping as babysitters etc - it's still not a one-direction relationship:)
My experience in North America is that kids will become independent earlier, have jobs and some income as early as 16, frequently will move out as young as ~18 (University), obtain loans or work jobs to provide financing for university, and are unlikely to return home afterwards (*Historically! The housing crisis may bring the two approaches closer together!). As such, there's lower energy invested by parents into upbringing and somewhat lowered expectation / frequency of supporting parents later.
My third anecdata observation is that some issues occur when cultures change - i.e. if parents invested a lot of energy into kids somewhere else, then they all move to North America where culturally we're less well setup to support our parents; this may occur in a "one-time" generational glitch with parents possibly left hanging.
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That's my overall perception; as to your specific case, devil is always in the details - outsiders like us don't know, and don't need to know the background - how much your parents supported you, what happened that jeopardized their retirement, and what your overall relationship is :-/. I am planning and expecting to support my dad in at least some of his retirement (my mom passed away young), but again, I was lucky with my parents, and cultural expectations and specific family relationships differ. We all have our own story and history.
>My third anecdata observation is that some issues occur when cultures change - i.e. if parents invested a lot of energy into kids somewhere else, then they all move to North America where culturally we're less well setup to support our parents; this may occur in a "one-time" generational glitch with parents possibly left hanging.
I invest everything I can into my kids, but I have zero expectations of them sacrificing their goals to help me. What people may have expected is kids will live nearby and help out, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to expect from nearby family, but things start getting dicey when kids have better economic opportunities in other places or simply want to live somewhere different or unaffordable for the parents.
Also, I know lots of immigrant cultures that have an expectation of daughters in law being expected to be full time chefs/nurses/maids, so one generation of women that had to be a chef/nurse/maid will get shafted, while they will not receive the same from their daughter in law.
I don't know your situation, but as for the sentiment, it sounds like you really resent this. My only advice is that you accept it and do it wholeheartedly. Assuming you can't change the situation, being at peace is sometimes worth more than money.
If you want extra motivation, keep in mind that raising a child (you!) is very expensive. If you paid everything back, it might be around the ballpark of paying some rent for your mother (or, way more...).
This is an absolutely ludicrous statement. I don't owe my mother for the birth or childhood that I wasn't around to give approval to having. Nor do I owe her an ounce of positivity that I'm paying her rent while she's owned and sold more houses and motorcycles and everything else while I've been estranged from her since I was kicked out of the house at 16 and she votes for Trump and republicans who want to eradicate the $1200/mo she lives off of outside of my money.
Be at peace.. my god.. lol. I don't have children, and won't have children. I don't expect anyone to pay for my old age.
I have had to provide material support to both of my parents, one of whom died suddenly, the other who is still around and resents my success while I provide almost all of their support. I provide the support because it's the "right" thing to do, but I fault no one who tells a parent to pound sand because they fucked up their life. How terrible of a person one must be to have children and then expect them to provide for them. You owe your parents nothing, it was their choice to have you, and their life to live. Maybe support social safety nets instead of pushing your terrible choices directly onto your children.
No. I have several siblings, and we are all aligned on our position. If you are down on your luck because of unfortunate circumstances, a hand will be extended. Life is unfair, and more often than not, people fail through no fault of their own. Fuck up your own life willingly, godspeed. Especially so if you will treat us poorly in the course of help being provided.
> You are actually mistaken completely. There s no your or theirs. It's all the same system, the cycle of life so to say and it's all connected.
If you'd like to provide for my irresponsible, conservative, self absorbed parent, let me know, I can provide logistics info. I have had my fill for this lifetime. Compassion and self preservation must exist in tension.
Lol, thanks for the offer but I see that your parents did a good job by raising enough children who would replace them and keep working. They did their part and this is the only thing I care about.
Don't get too excited, I donate to https://www.stophavingkids.org/ and similar efforts (helping provide funding to folks trying to get permanent birth control to affirm their reproductive choices).
Does this campaign target societies with excess child raring or societies what are about to collapse (that is all clearly below 2.1 children on average per woman)?
If the first, then this is the right thing to do as we have to find a balance (and we know where the balance is exactly), if the last then fy seriously, because it only makes the matter worse and doesn't give any help - a positive exponential process always trumps the negative one - you have to make all of them negative or close to 0 to actually succeed, of course negative process is also a dead end in the long run.
I don't want to get too far in the weeds in this thread, that's not kind to the forum. If you want to start a new thread on the topic, I am happy to contribute there. My efforts are focused on the micro: do you as an individual not want kids? I will do everything in my power to affirm that choice, and it is one of the most impactful choices one can make in life with regards to quality of life and suffering. Unwanted children cause both the children and the parent(s) to suffer (having grown up in a volatile home, I've given back by volunteering as a Guardian ad Litem [1] in the legal system and have seen the childhood suffering first hand). Millions of children go hungry every day, hundreds of thousands are in foster care, not to mention those foster kids then go on to suboptimal and challenging lives once adults (US centric). Roughly 40-50% of all annual pregnancies are unintended, both in the US and globally [2].
With regards to the macro or economics, I could care less of ponzi schemes that rely on an ever growing population. There are 8 billion people on this Earth, and we'll top out between 9-10 at the end of the century. If that number drops in half, or even more, that is not the end of humanity, simply pain on a suboptimal economic system that will need to adapt to the wishes of citizens participating within in.
Ok, you confirmed that you don't understand what you are doing.
Let me try to explain it to you. If there are two societies, one with negative birth rate and one with positive then while it may appear that they cancel each other out, it is only temporarily until one with the negative birth rates is extinct.
If you target only the society with the negative birth rate then you only help them closer to their extinction while at the same time making the life of the people harder and harder because they have to upheld the society with less and less people (it's not about money, it's about work).
Of course the life of the society with the positive (usually excessively positive) birth rates gets also worse and worse because they have to share usually constant amount or resource among constantly growing amount of people.
Both models are not sustainable model in the long run and the only solution is a balance for both societies.
On top of this I personally consider it as an act of genocide if this kind of scheme targets small nations with unique culture and language that already have unsustainable birth rates. Are you participating in genocide?
I was able to squirrel away a little of my mom's Social Security (and a bit of pension) money each month when she retired so that it was less likely I would have to dip into my own savings to support her.
Boomers in the US lived through potentially the most economically prosperous environment in the history of humanity.
Of course you can point out various crises and low points, but generally every factor has worked in their favor. They've had strong employment, cheap education, population growth, strong unions, rising wages, common pensions, strong dollar/low inflation, low real estate prices that later peak around retirement age, great stock market returns peaking around retirement age, advent of the 401k, cheap debt in peak earning years, and the list goes on.
Unless they had incredibly bad luck or a major disability it'd be hard to be in a bad spot for retirement without being completely financially irresponsible. I have much less compassion and willingness to help in that situation.
>you can point out various crises and low points, but generally every factor has worked in their favor.
Except for the crises and low points, of course. My first mortgage was 11% interest, inflation was roaring but there was still a recession (see "stagflation"[0]). Don't forget the 20% drop in stock market value in 1987. And the oil embargo[1]. And the Bush (1st) and Clinton tax increases.
Yeah, I feel this way in general but then I think about the specific.
Growing up, I knew a single mother who worked in a woman-dominated and rather underpaid field despite being (eventually) university educated and working her way up to management.
She could afford to rent, but not to buy, mostly because the down payment was perpetually out of reach despite living relatively frugally.
Then as her career started to make some traction (her late 40s), where she lived and worked the property market went stratospheric over a relatively small number of years and she was entirely priced out.
She died before retirement, so I don't know what that would have looked like.
It doesn't take incredible bad luck or major disability. It can just be a steady drip drip drip of bits of bad luck.
something like 40+ percent of the Boomer generation is going to retire to poverty. There are many reasons ranging from jobs that don't pay enough or didn't offer a retirement plan. Divorce especially grey divorces are a common reason for no retirement money as is medical bankruptcy. job loss in your 50s and age discrimination contributes to lack of recovery.
All the benefits that you pointed out of growing up in the Boomer era were concentrated in a very small part of the population. Pensions were not as common as you might think and a many of them were underfunded and collapsed in the late 1980s.
401(k)s were never intended to be a retirement plan. They were created to supplement pensions and personal savings. In my darker moments I think they were also created as a rent seeking vehicle for the financial industry.
Great stock market return benefits mostly the financial elite. My father bought stock for his kids and returns were pretty crappy. Every ESOP program I participated in found me buying high and selling low (bad financial advice).
Debit is never been cheap. When I bought my first house in 1980, it was 14 1/2% interest on a three year arm. we refinanced down to something like 9% a few years later. Over 15 years, it only appreciated by something like 2x-ish what we paid for it. when we bought our second house, interest was in the 6% range.
yes, I had a lot of opportunity but between exploitive/bad financial advice, medical bankruptcy, and divorce all those advantages came to nothing. The lesson to take from this is you are just as vulnerable to the same forces. You sound like you have better financial literacy but doesn't matter if it's one bad event or series of smaller bad events, all of your retirement planning goes in the dumpster with no hope of recovery.
what am I doing about my (lack of) retirement? Saving as much I can, choosing a better partner this time around, and like half of my generation, working till I die, and hoping I die quickly when the time comes.
In the US, it objectively has been for the last few decades (especially 15 years), hence the enormous asset price inflation. If you were not invested, you were losing ground, and if you were not leveraged, then those ahead of you were pulling away.
If my choice is "pay almost nothing, get no retirement" and "pay half your salary, get no retirement" then I'm 100% for the US model. Too bad I don't have that choice.
it's an unwritten rule of HN that you must be able to self-sponsor an EB5 investor's green card. It's just measly $900k.
/s, obviously.
I'm already married, and I don't have an advanced degree (nor I have the need for one). My only options of getting a green card are (ranked from the least to most ridiculous)
- winning in the green card lottery
- finding someone to sponsor me an EB3, which would be very difficult, as I would refuse to accept an H1-B, unless they also immediately file for an EB3 (because on H1-B my wife wouldn't get a work authorization, but with EB3 she also gets an EB3 as dependent spouse)
- coughing up $900k for EB5
- divorcing and marrying a US citizen (or LPR)
- doing something that would get me persecuted in my home country but what was perfectly legal in the US, and applying for asylum in the US
none of these options are feasible. I do play the green card lottery every year though.
I'm putting my own retirement in jeopardy because of her failure to be responsible. I'm not even 40. My uncle pays his mothers nursing home, but he's 65 and she's well into her 80s. Another thing that shouldn't have to be paid for by someone else.